Readers may recall years of posts about nitrate pollution in Minnesota published on this site, from Land of nitrate-tinted water: Adrian MN only most extreme example in state's groundwater games to It's all over now, baby blue? EWG analysis concludes nitrates rising in MN drinking water.
It's still an issue--but the dereliction of responsibility on the part Minnesota state government agencies is under scrutiny
Last week, Bluestem Prairie republished commentary by former state representative Jean Wagenius which addressed one agency's problems with addressing water quality, Minnesota Department of Health isn’t properly enforcing drinking water law, and kids will suffer.
In Saturday's Star Tribune, environmental reporter Greg Stanley shared Wagenius's criticism of another agency in A Minnesota agency was supposed to limit nitrates a decade ago. Officials say they can't.
A common problem in each piece? Nitrates.
In the column, first published in the Minnesota Reformer, Wagenius wrote:
Nitrogen/Nitrate Pollution
MDH must update the nitrate HRL standard. In large areas of Minnesota, groundwater used for drinking water is susceptible to pollution. Agriculture’s overuse of nitrogen in these areas is a major contaminant. The Environmental Working Group reports that many private wells have unsafe levels of nitrogen under today’s outdated HRL standard.
Minnesota statutes establish the criteria MDH must follow to develop safe drinking water standards. Health standards “must… include a reasonable margin of safety to adequately protect the health of infants, children and adults….”
The existing outdated nitrate HRL doesn’t do that. It is based on a 1962 federal standard. MDH acknowledges that this old federal standard is based on “outdated methods.” (See p. 80 of the SONAR report.)
If MDH were to develop a new HRL for nitrate, it would be based on human health alone. It would use new updated water intake rates that protect infants and children who drink more water per body weight than adults. (See p. 12 of the SONAR report.)
And, it would use current health science. In this case, current health science supports a more protective nitrate standard. It is 2023. We should be long past using adult-based standards that fail to protect more vulnerable infants and children. Minnesota law requires it.
A significant number of private wells and public water system wells are contaminated with nitrogen. Private well owners need current and transparent information so they know if their well water should not be used for drinking, and public well operators need to know if they must upgrade their treatment systems.
Stanley reports in A Minnesota agency was supposed to limit nitrates a decade ago. Officials say they can't:
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) is supposed to protect fish and other aquatic life by setting limits on the amount of nitrate pollution flowing into rivers and lakes.
The MPCA hasn't done it.
It has now been 13 years since lawmakers gave the agency $600,000 to study the problem and directed it to adopt a pollution standard. The process was expected to take three years.
Pollution regulators would need to come up with a way of keeping nitrates, which primarily come from big corn and soybean farms, below certain levels so they wouldn't degrade the state's waterways to the point where fish were dying.
MPCA leaders said recently that they have no plans to adopt such a standard anytime in the near future.
Without an enforceable limit, there is no reason to think that the nitrate pollution that has been harming groundwater, private wells and lakes and rivers for decades will improve, said Jean Wagenius, a former state representative for more than 30 years who helped write the bill funding the standard.
"It was obvious that nitrogen was a problem in 2010 and was getting worse," Wagenius said. "All we're hearing from the MPCA is that they're planning on just doing more of what they've been doing, which is not working."
Wagenius, who left the Legislature in 2021, raised the issue in a column she wrote last month in the Minnesota Reformer, saying that state agencies weren't enforcing the law.
Agency leaders told the Star Tribune that as they did the work to develop the standard, it became clear that it wouldn't address the root of the problem.
Enforcing it would raise significant costs — potentially hundreds of millions of dollars — on small wastewater treatment plants across the state, which don't produce much nitrate pollution, said Dana Vanderbosch, assistant MPCA commissioner.
Meanwhile, it wouldn't do much to reduce nitrates from Minnesota's primary source. State studies have found that more than 70% of nitrate pollution comes from agriculture, especially manure-intensive row-crop farming. Less than 10% of the pollution comes from point sources such as wastewater treatment plants.
"When we have a standard, as soon as it is passed we start applying it to our permits," Vanderbosch said. "Those are for regulated sources like wastewater treatment plants. But the large majority of nitrate pollution comes from unregulated sources. Unregulated means we have no authority to impel to act in any way."
Nitrate is a dangerous byproduct of nitrogen that can come from farm fertilizers and manure and leaches into groundwater. Much of the concern over it has centered on human health.
It is particularly harmful to infants. Years ago, the federal government set a nitrate limit for drinking water of 10 milligrams per liter, or 10 parts per million. That limit applies to all groundwater and any surface water that people and cities use to drink.
It does not, however, apply to the rest of state's lakes and streams.
Nitrate pollution is also dangerous to aquatic life. It's a major cause of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, where depleted oxygen makes it nearly impossible for creatures to survive.
Recognizing the threat, Minnesota pledged in 2014 to cut nitrogen pollution by 20% in the Mississippi River by 2025. However, it has only increased since then. By 2020, it jumped by as much as 62% in some parts of the Mississippi, according to a progress report from the MPCA.
What's particularly frustrating to Wagenius and other water quality advocates is that MPCA scientists did their job. They produced a report almost immediately, back in 2010, that showed that they believed that Minnesota fish would start to die if nitrate concentrations reached 4.9 parts per million in a water body for an extended period of time.
Agency leaders held off adopting the standard or setting a limit in order to wait for federal studies on the issue to wrap up at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
They ended up waiting more than 10 years. . . .
Read the rest at the Star Tribune, and check out the Bluestem posts below about earlier reporting about Minnesota's nitrate pollution problems.
Related posts
- It's all over now, baby blue? EWG analysis concludes nitrates rising in MN drinking water
- Growing chemical threat: MN Dept of Health annual drinking water report warns about nitrates
- Land of nitrate-tinted water: Adrian MN only most extreme example in state's groundwater games
- Rep. Torkelson dismisses concerns about nitrates in Minnesota's drinking water
- Check out MN water nitrate presentations Paul Torkelson didn't want shared with subcommittee
- Nitrates: Brown Co turns down MDA well testing aid because somebody might blame farmers
- Rep. Torkelson dismisses concerns about nitrates in Minnesota's drinking water
- Paging Rep. Torkelson: City of Fairmont issues water advisory, nitrate levels unsafe for infants
- Going with the flow: fertilizer elevated nitrate levels in Fairmont's drinking water supply
- Free Press: Nitrates in Mankato's drinking water wells will cost Southern Minnesota's Key City
- Randall, MN receives national drinking water award, but some citizens still buy bottled water
- Republican guy who voted for Minnesota's buffer bill continues to grandstand against it
Photo: The confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers (left). Photo by Tom Reiter courtesy of Friends of the Mississippi River.
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